Arie Nicolaas Habermann (26 June 1932 – 8 August 1993), often known as Nico Habermann, was a noted Dutch

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

. Habermann was born in

Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...

, Netherlands, and earned his B.S. in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and physics and M.S. in mathematics from the

Free University of Amsterdam The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

in 1953 and 1958. After working as a mathematics teacher, in 1967 he received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), abbr. TU/e, is a public technical university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its BSc a ...

under advisor Edsger Dijkstra. In 1968, Habermann was invited to join the department of computer science at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

as a visiting research scientist. In 1969 he was appointed an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

, and was made full professor in 1974, acting department head in 1979, and department head from 1980 to 1988, after which he was named Dean of the new School of Computer Science (established under

Allen Newell Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND Corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department ...

and Herbert A. Simon). He also cofounded Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in 1985. Habermann's research included programming languages, operating systems, and development of large software systems. He was known for his work on

inter-process communication In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categori ...

, process synchronization and deadlock avoidance, and

software verification Software verification is a discipline of software engineering whose goal is to assure that software fully satisfies all the expected requirements. Broad scope and classification A broad definition of verification makes it equivalent to software t ...

, but particularly for the programming languages

ALGOL 60 ALGOL 60 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them, representing a k ...

, BLISS,

Pascal Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...

, and

Ada Ada may refer to: Places Africa * Ada Foah, a town in Ghana * Ada (Ghana parliament constituency) * Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria Asia * Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, Tur ...

. He also contributed to new operating systems such as Edsger Dijkstra's

THE multiprogramming system The THE multiprogramming system or THE OS was a computer operating system designed by a team led by Edsger W. Dijkstra, described in monographs in 1965-66 (Jun 14, 1965) and published in 1968. Dijkstra never named the system; "THE" is simply ...

, the Family of Operating Systems (FAMOS) at Carnegie Mellon, Berlin's Dynamically Adaptable System (DAS), and Unix. Habermann served as visiting professor at the

University of Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick univer ...

(1973) and the

Technical University of Berlin The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...

(1976), and as adjunct professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (1986–1993). In 1994, the Computing Research Association began giving the

A. Nico Habermann Award The Computing Research Association (CRA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit association of North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia enga ...

to people for work that increases the involvement of underrepresented communities in computer research.

References

External links

Carnegie Mellon University archives

{{DEFAULTSORT:Habermann, Arie Nicolaas 1932 births 1993 deaths Scientists from Groningen (city) American computer scientists Dutch computer scientists Carnegie Mellon University faculty Software engineering researchers Dutch emigrants to the United States